As Life Becomes Even More Expensive, Nothing Has Really Changed How Its Decided Who Can't Afford To Live

The cliché is it's tough to get by and make a living. How much things aren't what they used to be, has been around the block and back. The streets aren't more dangerous, people are just as unyielding as they've always been. Obliging when there's something to gain being seen as polite. When the truth is people are downright dangerous while trying to get what they want.

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From Monday

Seventh Avenue and 58th Street Monday afternoon

A cold-blooded killing on the streets of New York City hasn't been an every day common occurrence in recent memory, but just yesterday afternoon The New York Times reported - shortly before 2 p.m. near 58th Street and Seventh Avenue, a 31-year-old man was shot in the head and killed on a busy Midtown street a block south of Central Park on Monday afternoon, the police said. Also that the victim’s identification indicated he was from Los Angeles. The New York Times Tuesday update, Photo Shows Man, Gun in Hand, Just Before Fatal Shot, included the victim's identity and this street surveillance photo.

Comments on Monday, following the killing, in The Times agree this was most likely a "hit." No doubt over some grievance that at one point or another can be reduced to that common thread, money. That commodity we either brag is the result of hard work or agree requires cunning, but in the end often results, as in this case, from the willingness to be ruthless.

Lucky Luciano

So as much progress as humanity has made, we're still dragged down by the same old characteristic greed.  

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From Sunday

The New York Times ran John Leland's East Village Shrine to Riots and Radicals about the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space opening on Avenue C, near 10th Street, in Manhattan, New York City. A space dedicated to the proposition a community's interest is not just tied to commercial purposes.

Full disclosure: Though I've chosen not to join any group, among the grass-roots non-profits highlighted in the museum is the above pictured Time's Up that was one of the sponsors of the September 28, 2012 Battle of the Bike Ban event where I gave a brief Bicycle Speech in The Great Hall. In addition Time's Up receives all commercial proceeds from the documentary shown that evening, that can also be found at the link Bicycle Speech in The Great Hall.

However one of the museum's main goals seems to be the remembering of the valiant Lower East Side efforts to affordably inhabit abandoned buildings, adequately described by Mr. Leland in The Times. Just another how to handle money tale.

Photo of Umbrella House by Marlis Momber